Closing the Ring is a 2007 romantic drama film directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer, Mischa Barton, Stephen Amell, Neve Campbell, Pete Postlethwaite, and Brenda Fricker. It was the final film directed by Attenborough, then aged 83, who died seven years later. The film was released in both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom on 28 December 2007. Closing the Ring is an international co-production between the United Kingdom, Canada, and United States. Plot In rural Michigan in 1991, Marie Harris (Neve Campbell) delivers the eulogy at the funeral of her father Chuck (David Alpay), a U.S. Army Air Force veteran who had fought in World War II. The church is full of veterans who knew and loved him. Her mother Ethel Ann (Shirley MacLaine) is sitting out on the church porch, smoking and nursing a hangover. Ethel Ann is totally indifferent about Chuck's death, which only her friend Jack Etty (Christopher Plummer) seems to understand. Marie is furious with her mother and with her implication that she slept with many of the veterans when they were all young, but then Ethel relents and says that she was always faithful. It quickly emerges that there is a lot Marie does not know about her mother's past and the true story of her love life. A young Ethel Ann (Mischa Barton) was in love with young farmer, Teddy Gordon (Stephen Amell), who builds a house with his best friends Jack and Chuck. Her parents think she is dating "good old reliable" Chuck (all three are in love with her), but within days of the Pearl Harbor attack, she has accepted Teddy's gold ring and unofficially married him – with Jack and Chuck as witnesses. The three young men fly out the next day. Teddy and Jack are stationed at RAF Langford Lodge near Belfast, where Jack eventually plans to propose to Eleanor (Kirsty Stuart), an Irish tart. Jimmy Riley (Martin McCann), Eleanor's young adult grandson, is in 1991 Belfast when he encounters local elder Michael Quinlan (Pete Postlethwaite), who is digging for wreckage of a crashed B-17 aircraft on nearby Black Mountain. Jimmy finds a ring at the site, becoming determined to return it to the woman from the "Ethel & Teddy" inscription. The U.S. VA identify an Ethel that crash victim Teddy Gordon left his belongings to. Inadvertently caught up in The Troubles, Jimmy